Feature by Joanna Brichetto

The release of Maple Sugar: From Sap to Syrup: The History, Lore, and How-to Behind this Sweet Treat coincides this month with a maple tree’s release of sap: the “sole ingredient of one of the world’s most appealing natural delicacies.” Author Tim Herd, a naturalist and award-winning environmental educator, explains how maple sap starts its inexorable rise between...

Feature by Joanna Brichetto

The Art of Marriage: A Guide to Living Life as Two by Catherine Blyth begins with a chapter in defense of the married state. Happily, this tone is sustained through the succeeding sections that detail, in great range and depth, every possible marital menace: in-laws, child-rearing, money, work, friends, fading desire, cheating and fighting. Glimpsing the enormity of what can go wrong might...

Feature by Joanna Brichetto

Best-selling author Adriana Trigiani’s first nonfiction title, Don’t Sing at the Table: Life Lessons from My Grandmothers, is being touted as “the gift book of the Christmas season.” Trigiani credits her success to the formative influence of her family—especially to the example of her “two stellar grandmothers,” Lucia and Viola, who “showed me, in...

Feature by Joanna Brichetto

How to Build a Fire: And Other Handy Things Your Grandfather Knew by Erin Bried takes readers back to basics by championing more than 100 practical life skills. All of them are guaranteed for life, but are especially valuable during an economic recession. Divided into 11 categories, the book covers the gamut of real-life scenarios out of doors (how to tie a bowline knot), in the home (how...

Feature by Joanna Brichetto

In Naked Eggs and Flying Potatoes, author, educator and Emmy Award-winning TV science wizard Steve Spangler conjures new tricks for kids, kidders and kids at heart. He makes it easy to transform ordinary household stuff into extraordinary outcomes, most of which tend to “ooze, bubble, fizz, bounce and smoke,” not to mention spew diet soda 12 feet into the air. Even the seemingly...

Feature by Joanna Brichetto

Thanks to the local food movement, most of us are within increasingly easy reach of foods grown or produced nearby. Yet even with community-supported agriculture programs, home gardens, farmers’ markets and enlightened grocery stores, some items remain out of reach, simply because of temperate zone limitations. You just can’t grow bananas in Nashville, for example—or can...

Feature by Joanna Brichetto

In Made by Hand: Searching for Meaning in a Throwaway World, Mark Frauenfelder, editor in chief of Make magazine, advocates the expansion of DIY into a pragmatic philosophy. After years of working with hundreds of diverse do-it-yourselfers, the author realized his own life could use a little tinkering. Frustrated by the fast-paced, consumer-centric and increasingly virtual nature of his...

Feature by Joanna Brichetto

With Handy Dad, Todd Davis—father of two and former HGTV host—constructs summer fun with a dual purpose: quality time with Dad, plus hands-on creativity and problem-solving skills in the real world. Lest this sound too didactic, listen to some of the 25 primo projects on offer: water balloon launcher, slingshot, climbing wall, zip line, lava lamp, dollhouse and water-pressurized...

Feature by Joanna Brichetto

Recently surprised by a middle-aged, educated mom who did not know that prunes were dried plums (“I thought they were just—prunes”) and another who did not know that trees could flower, it was newly clear to me that all of us could benefit from a fuller knowledge of the natural world. In The Practical Naturalist, produced in association with the National Audubon Society, the...

Feature by Joanna Brichetto

New moms need lots of help; the postpartum period is rough. Baby gets all the attention while Mom is at the bottom of everyone’s list—especially her own—for even basic care. If regular bathing and balanced meals are ancient history, workouts and decent hair are mere myth. And since a new mom can’t think straight—she has, after all, “just built a whole new...